Harmony from Discord

Clive Greensmith

Join us for the next installment of our Harmony from Discord series as we highlight two composers who were lost to the Holocaust but whose works continue to inspire. Clive Greensmith, formerly of the Tokyo String Quartet, will bring new life to composer and virtuoso cellist Pál Hermann’s Cello Concerto as we present the U.S. premiere of this recently reconstructed work. Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1902, Hermann was a Jewish cellist and composer who was captured in France in 1944 and sent to Auschwitz. The reconstructed work was realized by composer Fabio Conti.

The repertoire also includes Mahler’s iconic Totenfeier (Funeral Rites), originally composed as a symphonic poem in 1888. Mahler later incorporated the work as the first movement of his second symphony, completed in 1894.

We finish with Viktor Ullmann’s Variations and Fugue on a Hebrew Theme. The climax of Ullmann’s Seventh Piano Sonata, Variations and Fugue on a Hebrew Theme, was composed from inside the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp (known also as Terezín) after he was deported from Prague in 1942. Ullmann wrote of his time in Terezín: "Our endeavor with respect to arts was commensurate with our will to live."

This concert is sure to be a testament to the incredible fortitude of the human spirit.